The Management of Commercial Fisheries with the Aid of a Computerised Catch Logging System

Most of the world's commercial fishing fleets are presently equipped with manual data-logging systems. Although these allow for the collection of a range of data, they often have only crude locational references. Since many of the major problems which the industry faces are concerned with inequities or variations in the spatial domain, an Integrated Fisheries Computer Aided Monitoring system (FISHCAM) has been designed as a system which logs fish catches, and which allows for the analysis of catch and effort data in conjunction with other spatially related data. The on-board computer system integrates both a Geographical Information System (GIS) and a Global Positioning System (GPS) with a relational database management system. Data captured by the system is transferred to a resource manager module for detailed analyses. Since the database is linked to a proprietary GIS, there is the capacity to integrate the catch and effort data with a range of external data sets. This allows for a wide range of additional analyses, and for a range of geographical, mapping and textual output. Observations are also made on some important implementation considerations.